Day 33: I Am... Sasha Fierce

Ah, my favorite day of the week, Pilates and Pole! Today was fabulous, I had a 10 am Pilates class, roamed around Michael's for a while, made a bracelet, sold a sewing machine, hung out with some awesome puppy dogs, and went back to the gym for some S Factor Pole Fit where Q was teaching.

 

She had a special valentines surprise for all us ladies tonight. The playlist was only Beyoncé so we could channel our inner Sasha Fierce annnnnddddd we had pink moscato, chocolate covered cherries (which I did not eat), and roses. It was so sweet.

 

I had to take a few shots since everything  always looks better in red light:
 

 

 

After class Ryan, Joey, and I went to outback for dinner. It was so delicious. I had a filet, crab legs (no butter), salad, and potato. I really have no idea how outback cooks their potatoes so perfectly with no butter. It was everything I ever wanted in life. 

 

Now, I must go off to sleep from my food coma, I'll talk to you tomorrow.

Day 19: With a Little Help From My Friends

Man, today started out awesome. I had Pilates with Vicki, which is certainly my most looked forward to class of every week. We have excellent music, excellent instruction, and excellent results. I got some really awesome stretching in. I felt limber, awake and happy, and then my mental shit hit the fan.

I really wish I could wear a shirt all the time that says "Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe". I would mostly use it as a reminder for the other me to stop being such a buzz kill when I am having a fabulous day.... but I would also hope that other people would see it and think to themselves "Maybe I shouldn't be such a dick" or maybe they would magically become aware of the shittastic energy they are putting out in the world... but it's whatev's. People are assholes, they have their own shit, I get that. You can't be happy all the time.

Anyway, so in a two hour time span, I went from being relaxed and happy to tense and pissed off, or on, whichever way you want to look at it, and I took that attitude into what was supposed to be the best training session of the week. Q had set up for me and Lena to do a partner workout on Lena's last day at Gold's. Unfortunately, the first thing we did was get on my sworn enemy, the stair climber. Look, I am not even going to pretend like I was having a good time. I most certainly was not. At one point I was damn serious, I was about to quit the challenge. As the words came out of my mouth, Q yells "I don't train quitters"... which she doesn't. So I didn't quit. I sucked up my pissyness and kept stepping. I made it through the time on the stupid thing, but not without a lot of misery, huffing and puffing. The next twenty minutes I was still pretty grumbly, but then something weird happened and the happy me came back out of the blue. After we finished the 2nd round of inchworms, we stood up and interrupted our workout to dance it out on the turf. We are kind of awesome like that.

The rest of the workout was as fun as it should have be to begin with. Q took some pictures, check it:

Once we were finished, we wandered over to the smoothie bar, grabbed a drink and chatted with Morgan. I even met Joeys new competition, Dominic. Dude has the potential to be a beast. Joey better step his game up! Needless to say, I ended up sitting there until 4pm. The rest of the day went off without a hitch, I wrote, I stayed in my happy place. Lets aim to stay in our happy place next week, okay? On that note, I'll talk to you tomorrow.

Day 12: Welcome Back Flexibility, I’ve Missed You

I don’t have much to say about today other than I LOVE Pilates and holy crap I almost did a split. Last week when I did Pilates for the first time in many years, I left a little disheartened because I could no longer fold my body in the ways I once could. (Note: Many moons ago, I did Yoga/Pilates 5 days a week and was super flexible; I had since lost all flexibility and could barely touch my toes.)  

I am not sure what happened between last Friday and today, but I was killing it. During one set, Vicki had me keep moving my foot further away as I was going down, to the point I was almost in a complete split. I felt the stretch, but I was still in disbelief, so I asked her after class. Sure enough, she said she was so excited because I was in fact, almost in a full split. Next time, she is taking a photo for proof.

Now I am off to enjoy my weekend. We have friends coming over for game night. Yay! Here is to celebrating life and a week well done.

Day 5: The Struggle is Real

Have you ever thought you might be legitimately crazy? Have you ever had so many thoughts swirling around in your head you become nauseous? If not, you’re lucky. If so, welcome to the party. We should start a support group. As I type this I feel manic. My heart is pounding, my eye is twitching, and it is taking every ounce of self-control I can muster not to walk downstairs and grab a bottle of bourbon.

This morning my will power was strong, I was still high off last night’s accomplishments.  I woke up early, made a delicious breakfast and headed to a class I was actually looking forward to. I was taking a Pilates Rehabilitation where we actually got to use Pilates machines. I have seen the machines before, but never paid much attention to them. Let me tell you, when I first really looked at them, the first thing out of my mouth was “are we about to be water boarded?!” It didn’t help that when I walked over to my machine this notice was on it:

 

This is the actual machine:

I always knew the gym would try and kill you if you gave it the chance. This just confirmed my suspicion. Thankfully, Vicki was instructing and she didn’t let the machines come to life and exterminate their prey like I'm sure they wanted to. I think they trust her as one of their own.

I have taken several classes with Vicki, she is the Director of Group Fitness at ETC and responsible for the group signature classes that I absolutely love. With her I have been lucky enough to take Pound Fit, Body Pump, Pilates, Pole Fit and my absolute favorite, Air Fit (this is the silk scarves that are hanging from the ceiling that you do Yoga with). Vicki has a beautiful way of empowering your femininity that is good for your soul. I will never forget the first time I had a lengthy conversation with her. We had just started S Factor Pole Fitness as one of the group classes at ETC. I had no intention of taking it because I didn’t think I could get my big ass up that pole. Then she started telling me about the philosophy behind S Factor and I was so moved, I was teary eyed. Sure enough, I signed up and was in class the next day. Ladies, I will tell you one thing, if you want to get in touch with your inner goddess, go take an S Factor class. I felt so empowered. It is a beautiful class in a completely judgment free zone. There are ladies of all shapes and sizes and all fitness levels. It really is a lot of fun. It’s good for your soul.

That is one thing I am learning on this journey. You can’t just go hard and train, train, train. You have to do things you enjoy or you will collapse. I needed this Pilates class today for so many reasons. 1. Because I needed to deeply stretch my muscles after these last few days 2. Pilates is an incredible full body workout. 3. It corrects your posture and encourages spine elongation, which I desperately need. 4. It helps you learn how to breath during exercise which I need serious work on. 5 (and most importantly to me) I wanted to be there. I was looking forward to it. The mind/body connection that I feel during Pilates (and yoga) is healing.  I felt awesome when I left the gym!

I spent the next few hours doing things I love. I went and dropped off all the furniture for my client in Arlington, then I decided to treat myself to a stroll around some of my favorite home furnishing stores to see if they had anything new. I came home, grabbed a salad and sat down with my laptop. That is when the crazy came.

I started a battle with Bloggers comment software (the site that hosts this blog) that turned into an all-out war. When it comes to computers, I can figure out a lot of things and ease my way around pretty swiftly; but I kept getting errors and I was doing everything I was supposed to. On queue, I started to panic and go into a tail spin. Thank God Ryan got home, jumped on his computer and fixed the problem. Now, thanks to the Obi-Wan Canole, I have a working comment section. You would think that would have stopped my tailspin… but it didn’t.

When I get into my head like that, I spin and end up going down a rabbit hole of failures. I failed to fix this insignificant problem and all of a sudden I’m failing at everything, being a wife, being a small business owner, being a friend, and succeeding in the challenge. It is all very exhausting and very much bullshit. This is just my demons raising their head trying to keep me down. Well fuck that. I am stronger than that and I refuse to accept failure. There are too many people in my corner and I owe it to myself to be mentally and physically healthy. 

On that note, cheers to you friend, here is to staying awesome and living to see another day. I’ll chat with you tomorrow.